Looking For Answers

April 13, 1990

Looking for answers

It's virtually impossible to read anything about education in the United States today without getting depressed. The latest example is a story in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine about teaching children science.

It's plain from the article that we're failing. American students are not taking science courses. More than half the engineering doctorates in this country are now awarded to foreign nationals. Only 1 percent of American students study calculus.

The threat this poses to the nation's future is obvious, but this is not news. We know about our shortcomings. The question is: When are we going to do something about them?

Two states, Kentucky and Mississippi, are moving in the right direction. Kentucky, which has the lowest percentage of high school graduates in the nation, is raising taxes and plans to spend more than half a billion new dollars on school reform over the next two years.

Most important, the state is restructuring the way it finances school districts, where in the past per-pupil spending had varied from $1,800 to $4,200 per year. The new plan will set a minimum of $2,900.

Mississippi's students have traditionally done the poorest on national standardized achievement tests. Gov. Ray Mabus has signed two bills calling for expenditures of $1 billion to revise the curriculum and improve buildings and buses. Unfortunately, agreement on how to raise all the money has yet to be reached.

These moves won't necessarily solve the education problems in Kentucky and Mississippi. But they are an indication of the commitment necessary to put an end to what has become an American horror story: On an achievement test ranking students from 13 countries, Americans finished last in biology.